The whole program over it's 50 year life span is expected to cost $1T. The expected cost is about $600B for maintenance training, etc. About $250B for actually buying all ~2,000 planes. And about $150B for development. Even if the the whole development of the F-35 was a waste and all 100 or so planes already built were dumped in the scrap heap it still wouldn't amount to "hundreds of billions".

I understand some people don't like the F-35, but the hyperbole has gotten way out of control.

Cry babies my ass. I suppose people complaining about slashdot beta where cry babies too? How about Digg?

Whatever happened to keeping the customer happy? Reddit is a social media site, the users are the customers, and they are not happy. The entire premise of reddit is bring in the users to generate ad revenue. Along comes Pao who and pisses off a massive segment of the userbase. I doesn't matter if you like them or agree with them, if that is your audience your job is to keep them happy.

Pao's problem isn't that she made a mistake. The problem is she doesn't know how to use the site (for real she doesn't) and doesn't get the concept of user generated content. I mean reddit bills itself as the front page of the internet, so where do you go to get the news about her apology? Time. She apologized on national media before doing it on the very site she is supposed to be promoting, that's just clueless.

She is a terrible CEO and if reddits board had any brains they would fire her immediately.

The F-35 comes in three variants, A for Air Force, B for Marines, and C for Navy. They are all variations on the same theme. The A is the base model. The B is pretty much the same as A but swaps out one of it's fuel tanks for a lift fan. The C is bigger version of A with folding wings, bigger wings are needed to have lower take off and landing speeds for carriers. Sharing a common platform save megabucks on all the radars, radios, FLIRs, fancy electronics, and the massive amount of software that needs to be written. It also gives them all a common engine, cockpit, and ejection system, which makes keeping spares on hand easier.

The F-35B replaces the Harrier because the Harrier is ancient and being better than it is a low bar to meet.

The F-35A replaces the F-16 by having stealth and a useful range. The F-16 was designed as a point defence fighter to defend against the Soviets over Germany, short range meant that it could be small, light, and manoeuvrable. Here are the typical combat ranges for the various fighters: F15C: 1,967 km, F-35A: 1,135 km, F-22: 760 km, F-18: 740 km, F-16: 550 km. The secret to the F-16's manoeuvrability is that they ditched a lot of fuel weight. The problem is the Soviet Union collapsed and the point defence mission disappeared. The F-16 found a new lease on life when the strapped an external fuel tank and targeting pod on it to give it enough range to be a bomb truck, but the extra weight of that fuel makes it shit for manoeuvrability. So the F-16 can either have range and shit manoeuvrability, or great manoeuvrability and a useless range. The F-35A has both, plus stealth, plus better infrared/optical sensors so it doesn't need a targeting pod.

The F-18A/C has the same problems as the F-16. So it is being replaced by two fighters, the F-18E/F Super Hornet for air superiority, and the F-35C for attack missions.

The A-10 is basically a plane without a mission. It was designed in the days before precision weapons when the only way to hit tanks was to strafe them WWII style. That means low and slow, which means it needed to be armoured against AA. Great, except the Soviets simply upped the AA from 23mm to 30mm, introduced their version of the Stinger called Igla, and added more armour to the roof of their tanks. By the late 80s the A-10 was a death trap, fly low and Soviet AA will kill it, fly medium and Igla will kill it, fly at normal hight and you can't aim. And even if you could aim it's questionable if the GAU could still disable most recent Soviet tanks. The final nail in the coffin is the Soviet Union collapsing. There are no hordes of tanks for the A-10 to kill so what good is it? Against even a moderate air defence network it can't survive, which is why it had to be pulled off attacks against Republican Guard in the Second Gulf War, too many were shot down. Against a unsophisticated enemy like an insurgency it is too expensive, if the enemy can't shoot you down send a drone. The done is more accurate, cheaper, longer loiter time, and can provide video feeds to ground commanders. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the A-10 only provided something like 18% of the CAS missions, far less than the F-16s or F-18s. The USAF used the A-10s because they have them, but they don't want them.

The F-35 can replace all of those planes because one was hopelessly out dated. One had already lost its mission to the remaining two. The final two work okay, so the F-35 was designed as a upgraded version of them with better range, better sensors, and stealth.

Oh look, another F-35 hack job by David Axe from War is Boring. Maybe if he wasn't so consistently full of shit, or actually had a source to quote I'd bother to read his blog.

First, it's a strike fighter, why the fuck are people getting so worked up about dog-fighting? You know that these planes are not yet rated for their full flight envelope, or you would if Axe did his job. You would also know that the F-35 has more than twice the range of the F-16. Imagine that, a strike fighter that carrier more weight in fuel than point defence fighter. It's almost like dog-fighting wasn't the primary design goal. You know what else can't dogfight? The A-10 that guys like Axe are always furiously masturbating over.

Second, this isn't the 1970s. Sure dogfights may happen, but a hell of a lot less than BVR attacks and SAMs. And before anyone starts talking about Vietnam, go look at the numbers for that war. The little blurb you got about F-4 Phantom from watching Top Gun is wrong. For every plane lost in a dogfight, two were lost to AA missiles, and five were lost to SAMs, in the fucking 70s. Lord knows the world hasn't had any other conflicts since then from which to draw lessons.

Third, it's the most expensive plane program in history at $1T? No shit, the program is to build and maintain almost 3,000 fighters over 50 years. In fact is "almost" as expensive as the $3T to keep doing what we are doing: pumping out a half dozen different air frames with no common supply chain so that each one can be good at exactly one mission. But if you still think it is too expensive, I have to ask, compared to what? The F-22? Not even close. The Eurofighter? Lol. Russia's latest vaporware? Sure if they ever build more than some prototypes. Some last generation platform with no stealth? Sure that will make a great strike platform against an air defence system in contested air space. The money you save on a "cheap" F-16 Block 60s at $70 million vs an F-35A at ~$85-90 million, won't even cover the cost of all the extra shit you have to attach to it to F-16 to get the same performance.

These endless hack jobs on the F-35 project need to stop. This isn't 2008, we have over 100 of these things flying already. They are a mostly known quantity, and they greatly out perform the systems they are going to replace.

It's not about Linux being this big juice target for developers, it's about making Linux ports a low enough hanging fruit for developers to target. Video game companies, like all businesses, are looking for a return on their investment. If the middleware you are using doesn't support Linux adding support is a huge cost with little pay off. But if all of the middleware you are using already works on Linux, there is a good chance the little bit of extra work you need to make your game Linux compatible can be a profitable endeavour. That is what this is about.

Linux has such a small share of the market it is silly to target that platform specifically, I mean Linux is only ~1.5% of the steam deployments. But if you can grab that 1.5% of extra sales for only a few weeks more work, why not?

Have people suddenly forgot how much the media, including the BBC, has maligned the whole GTA series?

"GTA will make kids violent", "GTA is a crime simulator", "GTA is responsible for school shootings", and most recently "GTA promotes violence against women". The BBC has played host to a wide array of nonsense claims and dubious "experts". And now the BBC is making a drama (not a documentary) giving disbarred and disgraced lawyer Jack Thompson just a little bit more airtime to further insult the company and their customers. Is it really such a surprise that they company doesn't want it's flagship product to be the target of yet another hit piece?

Take Two's claim against the BBC is obviously bullshit, but it's a little rich for BBC to come crying now that they are getting a taste of their own medicine.

While it certainly does make it difficult to discuss with friends it has its upsides as well.

One big thing I'm hoping to see is shows with a more complex plot. As it stands you only see one episode per week, and during that week you forget things. Plus you may miss an episode here an there, which means writers can't make things too complicated or they will loose viewers who miss episodes.

But a season that gets released as a block and people binge watching it is a whole different ball game. You can afford to have more characters and more things going on simultaneously. Having a character show up 4 episodes ago is 4 weeks on TV, but more like 4/5 hours on Netflix. People can track the story never miss an episode, remember everything about the story as it develops.

Personally I hope this leads to TV shows that are much richer in content, and have more developed story lines.

The current cost of an F-35A is $94.8 million (LRIP8), down from $221.2 million (LRIP1) in 2007, and is on track to meet the ~$85 million target in 2018/9. I don't know where your $300 million comes from but the F-35 hasn't cost that much in over 8 years. Further all 3 branches will be using the F-35x as a strike aircraft, hence the name Joint Strike Fighter. I know it's popular to be doom and gloom about the F-35, but the truth is that project has been on track for the last 4-5 years.

What is it with governments and putting hackers in high security prisons and solitary confinement?

These people are computer nerds not violent criminals. There was no need to put Kevin Mitnick in solitary, no need to put Swartz in solitary, and there was no need to put Sunde in to high security. This is pretty clearly an abuse of power by the government, and there should be a way to stop it.

Doing things the green way is usually more expensive. Most companies would be happy to dump toxic shit in to rivers, and pollute the air if governments would let them. So if Europe says you have to do X to keep the environment clean, and X costs Y, some companies will pay Y amount and others will move so that they don't have to do X.

Nike could pay people a decent wage in the US to make their shoes. But sweat shops in the developing world are much cheaper. This is the same issue, but with the environment instead of wages.

The bill in question Bill C-13 was introduced almost a month ago and passed two readings in parliament before the attack. Canada has been debating this bill in parliament and in the media for some time. I don't agree with this bill, but to label it a reaction to the shooting is completely wrong. Especially bad is the fact that a quick google search would have been enough to identify the mistake.

For those who don't know, Ian Jackson was the most vocal anti-systemd proponent on the committee. Considering that last time systemd was up for vote he tried: strategic voting, usurping the committee chairman, and finally throwing a temper-tantrum and refusing to talk to anyone for a few days. When it was all over he promised to try and reverse the committees decision with a General Resolution.

And now having failed to win on technical merits, he is back at it again trying to kill systemd via 'loose coupling'. Something that the committee declined to rule on.

The BitHammer relies on Local Peer Disocovery which gives priority to peers that are close to the bit torrent client. This is good for ISPs because it tries to keep the bit torrent traffic inside their own network instead of hammering peering connections. This also makes connections faster for the bit torrent client.

If you want to get around BitHammer you just need to turn off Local Peer Discovery, if BitHammer can't find you it can't block you. But now the ISPs are going to get screwed because Local Peer Discovery is turned off. This will also make the torrents slower for the client.